Emma Lane Samuelson

social artistry odyssey

Through my spiritual community I discovered Social Artistry Odyssey and attended the annual retreat in 2015. I joined the leadership team for the 2016 retreat as a marketing and social media lead. It was my first big experience in design and content creation, and I mostly used Canva as my design platform to create posts promoting our event. Social Artistry Odyssey is affiliated with The Launching Pad, ELLSSA, and Jean Houston’s Human Potential Movement.

youtube stars

I began writing guest blogs for YouTube Stars in high school, and continued to write articles for them into college. I got to choose my own topics and had to include videos to accompany my writings. It was a great experience, and I am very grateful to the site’s creator Kenny for giving me a chance to showcase my writing at a young age. The website ceased production in 2016.

Personal Poetry

I have been writing poetry since childhood and it is my deepest form of expression. I often write poetry when processing big changes, big emotions, and societal challenges we face in the wake of unequal opportunity and discrimination. I find poetry to be such an incredible way to feed my creativity and discover new elements of my writing style that emerge as I grow and shift. While I have a catalogue of over one hundred poems, these are a few of my favorites.

and the boys

and just like that, it’s me
and the ticking clock at 4am
isolated yet satisfied yearning
for a bit more, you
trickle down my throat like
ice cold water on a summer day
feeding my mind as another moment
passes by, I feel drenched in
emotion yet detached like a fish
on the hook, trust seems to be
present as much as it seems to lack,
softer I glow in the early wake of
the morning that’s too far away
too grasp, I sit and ponder at the
magic of it all,
just me and the boys just
the way I like it,
all too familiar I split particles of
desire and boundary like it’s my
obligation, fearing the morning
without regret, I stay
just a little longer wishing
for what I cannot trespass.

22

sitting at a booth with six strangers screaming
that we love each other through jagged
breath, exhausted we giggle in hiccups and
stare at your watch, waiting for the waitress to kick us out
or sing me happy birthday.
turning 22, something changes when nothing
is supposed to, something happens
at midnight we won’t remember,
a word that mattered, or your head
bouncing off my chest as I laughed, or maybe it was poetry you
read outside the wide restaurant window, when I couldn’t stop staring
at the lettuce in your teeth.
tomorrow I’ll wake up with a cellophane
heart and a scowl
I’ll wrap around my outfits
like projected tinnitus, take it with me
to the backyard where a spider crawls
over hops vines, captures and kills a moth
three times it’s size stuck on its web, the beast
struggled itself to exhaustion before it got eaten
alive,
and somehow that’s a good omen
for the year to come.
I’ll laugh away the buzzing
in my head if cinnamon apple pie made by my mother
can soothe the heartache I felt after Paris:
all white walls and door slots
through which slid less than elegant offals. the catabolic result
of a manic high ended in month long book reading binges
back in the desert where death is a regular fixture,
and the elk skull on my mailbox reminds me of my age.
back in restaurant city I laugh hollow
and remember my hands
scratching the small of his back,
an orgasm like looking
down a long black tunnel.
I kill half a cigarette in one drag,
hope I pass out and wake up
next to him.
instead I’m still sitting around chicken-waffles and milkshakes,
candles drowning in sugar
in this dream I can’t pinch myself awake from.
these friends were so real until I remembered
I burned this diner down
three years ago.
snuff the cigarette out in syrup, experience
the opposite of deja vu:
the same thing I’ve seen
a thousand times made new. 

careful of various interaction, darling

step back I shake
a little after you push
my button like a truck hits a
pole, triggering with distress I shudder
leaving the room a little
quieter than usual, you
tug me again, I stiffen for
you know I hate it
when you call me that, that
thing that feeds on my shattered
emotions that bleed ego,
I harden, feeling the joy of the
last 48 hours dissipate as quickly
as it burned, these times come
with anxiety, fear, distrust, loneliness, alienation, and
isolation,
viral isn’t a word so hot anymore, we
lock our doors, cover our faces, stay apart
as much as we can, no one
knows how to act or what to say
but we’re moving through,
and despite the dust on the table and
the cigarette still smoking in the den, love
is in the room, it’s pouring out from
our ears because we search it, in
everything in everyone, under all the
polarization its resting in a
small wooden chair waiting for us
to grace it with our presence,
sit on its lap and ask for it to hold us.